After an almost two month hiatus, the SACS/Warren gun finally got a trip to the range today. It was a very short practice session (less than 150 rounds and less than ninety minutes) but it gave me a chance to assess the gun’s condition. The first 31 rounds I fired were the round that’s been in the chamber since my last practice and the three magazines’ worth of carry ammo (Federal 124gr +p HST) I’ve had loaded for months. There were no stoppages or problems of any kind.

Most of my practice was dedicated to getting reacquainted with the pistol and marksmanship. First I shot Dot Torture at seven yards. Results weren’t what I’d hope for, a 46 out of 50 with some very sloppy misses on the first two dots (which should be gimme’s).

It was very interesting to experience the VCD Grips after being away from the gun for so long. With a lot of the callous and tougher skin worn away, my dainty girlish hands definitely felt the roughness of grips in short order. By the end of the practice session, it was uncomfortable. However, even without any recoil control practice since last year, the grips did an incredible job helping keep the gun on target from shot to shot. Given a choice between toughening up my hands again or more muzzle flip, I’ll opt for working my hands. It shouldn’t take but a few more practices before I can go back to 500+ rounds at a session without noticing the grip’s texture.

The one bit of quasi-speed work I did was shooting Ken Hackathorn’s “Test” (ten shots in ten seconds at ten yards) from concealment on a B-8. I had to use the turning target system at the range since I did not have a shot timer with me, so all I know is that I finished with a good bit of time left to spare. I scored 96/100 points.

The gun didn’t get any maintenance before shooting today. It hasn’t seen any oil since early December and hasn’t been cleaned since the end of October (that’s more than 4,500 rounds ago!), and it’s been loaded in a holster by my bedside or in my Versipack the entire time. Nonetheless, as mentioned above it worked exactly the way you’d expect a pistol to work.

I should have time over the next few weeks to get in more practice. That 25,000th round is just around the corner…